‘Very much. I’ve always liked this part of the country. I used to come here on summer holidays.’
‘Really? I’ve known Dartmouth since I was a boy – rather more years ago than yourself. I was a cadet at the College.’
‘Rear Admiral Foster was there, too. I’ve heard all about the cold baths.’
He smiled. ‘They weren’t so bad – once you got used to them. Did you go sailing here when you were on your holidays?’
She shook her head. ‘We didn’t have a boat, or any idea how to sail one. My brother and I spent most of our time on the beach.’
‘I’d be very glad to take you out sailing. It’s rather a nice trip up the river to Dittisham.’ He saw her face change and a wary look come into her eyes.
‘The trouble is I don’t get much spare time, I’m afraid. And there’s Esme to look after.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you must be very busy.’
She added, quite unexpectedly, ‘But I’d like to do that – one day.’
Before he could say anything else, somebody appeared in the doorway – an elderly woman with hair dyed the colour of brass, dressed in an old-fashioned ankle-length gown. ‘I can see that I am interrupting you, Mrs Hillyard.’ She surveyed them, head inclined to one side like an inquisitive parrot.
‘Not at all, Mrs Lamprey. This is Lieutenant Commander Powell. He’s come to see Monsieur Duval.’
‘Oh.’ She looked at him with mock severity. ‘I do hope you’re not going to take our dear Frenchman away from us again. We’re very fond of Monsieur Duval, aren’t we, Mrs Hillyard? Such a lovely man.’ She stepped into the room. Closer up, he could see the heavy make-up she wore, with vivid crescents of mauve eyeshadow on her eyelids and jet black mascara on lashes that were surely false. He inhaled some overpowering perfume. She was studying him with evident approval. ‘I always think the Royal Navy uniform looks so dashing. Did you win that medal in the Great War, Lieutenant Commander?’
‘Yes.’ To his dismay he could see Barbara Hillyard edging towards the door, leaving the room. It seemed his fate, to be interrupted by overbearing women.
‘What did you do to earn it? Do tell me.’
He said shortly, ‘Nothing very much. It was a long time ago. I’m afraid I’m deskbound these days.’
‘Oh, I know just how it feels when one’s days in the limelight are over. I was on the stage, you see. You may have heard of me. Vera Vane.’
With a great effort he said politely, ‘I’m sure I have. I must have seen you a number of times.’
‘Yes, indeed. I worked with all the great names, you know – Barrymore, Bernhardt, du Maurier, Beerbohm Tree . . . those were the days.’
She went on talking and talking until, to his great relief, Louis Duval returned. ‘If you’ll excuse us, Mrs Lamprey.’
‘Oh, don’t mind me, Lieutenant Commander. I’ll just sit here quietly.’
‘We shouldn’t wish to disturb you. We can go outside.’
When they had reached the safe haven of the garden, Duval said, ‘That was your first encounter with Madame Lamprey?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are very fortunate that you do not encounter her every day – especially at breakfast.’
‘You have my sympathy.’
He lit Duval’s Gauloise for him, and his own Players. They strolled up and down the lawn. The garden was already taking on a mellow look, leaves beginning to turn, early summer plants over their best, later ones in flower, a Virginia creeper changing from green to red, wasps burrowing into the overripe plums that had fallen from the tree into the grass. The year was beginning to slip away. He would not be sorry to see it gone.
He said to the Frenchman, ‘I’ve got a piece of good news for you. There’s been agreement at Cabinet level for your proposal. It’s been decided that you should go back to France and try to recruit civilians as informants, as you suggested. There’s a proviso, though. You have a time limit of one month. After that you must return to report any progress.’
‘One month! That’s not nearly long enough.’
‘I appreciate that, but the order comes direct from the Prime Minister.’
‘I might make very little progress in so short a time.’
‘You’ll have to do the best you can, I’m afraid. One month only.’
Duval shrugged. ‘All right. How soon can I leave?’
‘Probably within a week. Arrangements still have to be finalized.’
‘And do I take the same route – fishing boat to Pont-Aven?’
‘Not to Pont-Aven. You’ll be taken to a beach a few kilometres to the west of there and rowed ashore by dinghy at night.’
‘Which beach?’
‘A private one – the foreshore to a château. Apparently the Parisian owner is seldom there.’
‘I think I know exactly the one. But your information is not quite correct. It’s a villa, not a château, and the owner is not from Paris but a businessman from Rennes.’ Duval gestured with his cigarette. ‘To a Breton anyone from outside his own village is a Parisian.’
‘Do you know this man personally?’
‘I have only met him once. I did a painting of the villa. It appealed to me as a subject. You’re right, though, that he is seldom there. A good place to land. How did you find out about it?’
‘Your Deuxième Bureau can be pretty helpful, if we ask them very politely. They’ve even got hold of a French bicycle for you. I hope you can ride one.’
‘Naturally. One never forgets.’
‘By the way, this puts you officially on our payroll and means that we’ll take care of all your living expenses. There’s provision in our department for that sort of thing. I’ll have a word with Mrs Hillyard about your room. She seems quite willing to keep it for you.’
‘And what lie do you propose that I tell her this time?’
‘The same one. You’re needed in London for liaison work.’ He paused. ‘You do understand the risk you’ll be taking?’
‘We talked about that before, Lieutenant Commander. I understand very well.’
Powell glanced at his watch. ‘I have to leave now but I’ll be in touch again shortly. We’ll need to go into more detail. To plan everything as thoroughly as we can. I don’t need, of course, to remind you of the need for complete secrecy.’
‘No, you do not.’
On his way out he ran into the woman, Mrs Lamprey. She fluttered her chiffon scarf at him coyly. ‘Have you finished your little talk?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘And will Monsieur Duval be going away again?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘For long?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘You’re being very secretive, Lieutenant Commander. I’m beginning to think there’s something clandestine afoot.’
He said pleasantly, ‘Nothing as exciting as that, unfortunately, Mrs Lamprey. All very dull, routine stuff.’
Eight
They crossed in the same sardine boat – the Espérance – but this time the lieutenant commander had been tightening things up. There was no barrel of Algerian wine – or, indeed, wine or alcohol of any kind – and the replacement for the lovesick Daniel was a dour Royal Navy rating. Duval’s old friend, Lieutenant Smythson, had greeted him brightly.
‘Here we go again, sir.’
‘So we do, Lieutenant.’ He had nodded towards the new crew member. ‘Does he speak French?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Isn’t that a little dangerous?’
‘Not really. He’s a Geordie – from Newcastle. If he opens his mouth nobody will be able to understand a word – including us. We can pass him off as Icelandic, or something.’
They had left Dartmouth, as before, in the late afternoon. Lieutenant Commander Powell had come down to see them off, shaken their hands, and wished them good luck. As the fishing boat had pulled away and headed down the estuary the Englishman had stayed on the quayside – an erect and solitary figure. D
uval had waved in farewell and the lieutenant commander had raised an arm in response.
The crossing was unpleasantly choppy but he was getting used to that. When was it not? At dawn they were off Ushant and the sea was worse. They decided not to attempt the Chenal-du-Four passage inside the island with fang-like rocks and lethal currents, and kept well to seaward. No enemy aircraft materialized to harass them but nonetheless they took a course that kept the Espérance within the four-mile limit, and they stopped the engine and hoisted the sails. By the evening the wind had dropped and the sea was calm enough to make the night landing relatively simple. They hove to at about three hundred metres off the beach. Under cover of darkness, Lieutenant Smythson and Duval set off in the rubber dinghy with the bicycle lashed on board. The lieutenant nosed the boat gently onto the shore and they unloaded the bike. The beach appeared to be completely deserted – no sentries, no lights from torches, no sound but the rhythmical surge and drag of the waves on shingle.
Smythson said breezily, as though it were a question of a little holiday, ‘See you in a month, sir. We’ll be back to pick you up. As arranged.’
At such times, Duval thought, the English half of the lieutenant came well to the fore: the admirable Anglo-Saxon sang froid, the casual nonchalance. No French histrionics. No foreign melodrama. There was something to be said for it, after all. He waited for a moment on the beach while Smythson rowed away in the darkness back towards the Espérance and then set off, wheeling the bicycle as quietly as possible. He could make out the dark mass of the villa ahead, set back a hundred metres or so from the beach. It was an old place, built in the last century and agreeably weathered by sun and wind and time. Passing by on one of his trips in the Gannet, he had liked the look of it enough to seek permission to paint it ashore. It had taken some time to track down the owner in Rennes, but the man had agreed readily enough; in fact, he had ended up buying the painting.
The bike made no sound as he pushed it over the lawn. No sign of life that he could see, but then he had not expected any. The information was that the owner had been arrested by the Germans in Rennes for black market dealing and was languishing in prison. The villa would be locked up, of course, but he remembered some outhouses at the side – an old dairy and some stabling. A useful place to hide and rest and wait for dawn and the end of the curfew, before taking to the road. He had almost reached the terrace outside the windows when he heard someone cough and froze instantly. A mere few yards ahead, a cigarette glowed and then faded. Another cough – the lung-deep cough of a heavy smoker, and then the sound of boots walking a little way along the terrace and the scrape of metal on stone as they turned to come back again. He waited, gripping the handlebars and not daring to move a muscle. Again, the cigarette glowed and faded. Again, the man coughed harshly. Whoever he was, he was a fool to carry on smoking; he’d end up like Jean-Claude Vauclin.
There was the sound of a door opening and more footsteps coming onto the terrace. And then voices speaking in German; the rasp of a match being struck. By the flame’s light he saw their faces and their Wehrmacht caps. More talk and some laughter. No wonder they were laughing, he thought, with most of Europe cowering at their feet. Clearly, the villa had been requisitioned – something that the lieutenant commander’s Free French informants had not known or bargained for. Nor he, come to that.
As he stood motionless in the dark, wondering what to do next, the two Germans strolled away down the terrace, chatting together, their backs turned to him. He wheeled the bicycle silently across the grass to the side of the house and lifted it across the gravel driveway, past the outhouses and out through the entrance gates onto the road. It was too dark to ride and so he walked as fast as he could in the direction of Pont-Aven until he was well away from the villa. A German army lorry came along, but slowly enough to give him plenty of time to conceal both himself and the bike in the deep roadside ditch while it passed by. When two more lorries approached soon after, he decided to stay where he was and rest up for a while. Mercifully, the ditch was dry and the long grasses, still warm from the heat of the day, made a rather comfortable couch, as well as good camouflage.
He dozed for a while, waiting for dawn. It was an odd feeling to be skulking in a ditch like a common criminal; to know that he dared not trust his own countrymen enough to knock on some cottage door and ask for refuge. Odd and very sad. His country was divided against itself. There were those who believed Marshal Pétain to be the saviour of their honour and would blindly follow his lead, and those who despised him for kowtowing to the Germans. And there would be those who sat on the fence, wanting to stay out of trouble at all costs. Somewhere, though, among them, there would be the people he was looking for – ordinary little people ready and willing to risk their lives for France.
In England they would be sleeping – the sleep of the just, the sleep of the free. Not for them the terrors and shame and disgrace of enemy occupation. Not yet and, most probably, not ever. Saved by a moat, as Shakespeare had so poetically described the narrow strip of water that the English, typically, insisted on calling their channel . . . this fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war . . . Mrs Lamprey had entertained them one evening with that very speech – an impromptu performance in the sitting room after one of Mr Churchill’s stirring wireless broadcasts. He smiled at the memory. Even when delivered fortissimo by Mrs Lamprey, it had to be said that the English language had a wonderful richness and majesty, though most Frenchmen would sooner cut their throats than admit it. He risked a cigarette. If he had had any good sense he would be safely and comfortably in bed in England as well. Which brought him, as a natural progression, to think of Madame Hillyard. He smiled to himself again in the darkness.
He dozed some more until the sky grew noticeably paler in the east and he could begin to see the countryside around him – trees, fields, hedges, materializing gradually from the night, assuming form and dimension. A cock started crowing at a nearby farm. Another half an hour and he emerged from the ditch with the bicycle – a battered old machine with near-useless brakes and perverse steering – and set off unsteadily on the empty road towards Pont-Aven. All he needed was a black beret on his head and strings of onions hanging from the handlebars to pass throughout Brittany without comment.
The town was beginning to stir, shutters clacking back loudly against whitewashed walls. Alphonse had already opened up. ‘Monsieur Duval! What a surprise to see you up and about so early.’
‘I’m turning over a new leaf. Reforming.’
‘Ah . . . that is a pity. Life is already difficult enough for us all without more sacrifices. You have been away?’
‘Just for a while.’
He sat down at his usual table, legs aching from the unaccustomed exercise – the bad one with the old war wound stiffening up. The coffee was worse than before, the bread greyer and coarser and the butter and jam needed a magnifying glass to be seen. There was, apparently, no ham, sausage or pâté to be had for love or money. Alphonse, naturally, was desolated, his arms waving apologies.
‘The Boche are responsible . . . what can one do?’
‘How have things been here lately?’
‘Terrible. There have been arrests – everyone is afraid of what may happen next. We are all in their dirty hands.’
‘Indeed, we are.’
‘And for how long, I ask myself, monsieur? How many years shall we have to endure them?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Next it will be England’s turn. I hear them speak of it when they come in here. They talk of what they will do when they are in London. Not as much fun as Paris, they say, but interesting, and it will be a pleasure to teach the English a lesson in humility.’
‘Now, that would be interesting.’
Alphonse took the napkin from his arm to flick a fly off the table. ‘A little cognac to follow, monsieur? To give courage for the day?’
‘You still have some?’
‘For old customer
s, like yourself. I can do nothing about the miserable food rations, but I have a good store of bottles hidden safely away where the Boche will never find them.’
‘You’re a resourceful man, Alphonse.’
‘Practical, more likely, monsieur. How could one face life as it is now without such little comforts?’
‘Very true.’
The cognac – large rather than little – did much to restore him, and he lit a cigarette to go with it. Some more customers came in, regulars like himself, and he nodded to them and exchanged a few words. They all seemed resigned to their fate: to have accepted the Occupation since they could neither fight it nor ignore it. They would see themselves, he thought, not as defeatists, but realists. He was finishing the cognac when some German soldiers entered, talking loudly among themselves, and sat down. The guttural harshness of their language grated on his ears. He watched Alphonse hurry over to attend to them and the way that he bowed and scraped. But who could blame him? His livelihood was, as he had put it, in their dirty hands. As Duval paid his bill and left, Alphonse winked at him.
The hallway was empty. No Mademoiselle Citron dismayed to see him. Perhaps this time he would find his apartment unoccupied? He padlocked the bicycle, left it propped against the wall and went upstairs, limping a little. As he opened the door, he half-expected to see another German sitting in his chair, but there was nobody there and no sign that anyone had taken up residence. He shaved, took a bath, put on clean clothes and went down the staircase again. Mademoiselle Citron awaited him at its foot.
‘So, you are back again, monsieur.’
If she could find an excuse, he thought, she’d sell him to the Germans at the drop of a hat. ‘I am.’
‘For long?’
He said equably, ‘I never know. There is no need to concern yourself.’
‘That is your bicycle?’
‘It is.’
‘I should prefer it kept outside.’
‘If I do that, mademoiselle, it will certainly be stolen. How much should I pay you extra in order to keep it indoors?’
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